Describing yourself during meetings

Over the last few years you may have noticed that many meetings and conference presentations start by people describing themselves. The idea is to make the meeting as inclusive for visually impaired people as possible. But is it for visually impaired people only? Does it make a meeting more inclusive? Is it mandatory? There are many more questions for which there are no guidelines, and often get awkward to ask. I’ll try to answer some of these questions.

Who is the description for?

Generally the descriptions are for visually impaired people, who are not able to see the videos or the presenters at a live event. It is supposed to make the event more inclusive, interpreting information that is only available visually. But more about this later. However, these days it is not uncommon to join calls where some people use the video and others don’t. Thus, we can turn this around a bit, and say that visual description can be equally relevant for sighted people who chose to turn on the video, when one of the speakers is joining using audio only. I have to say I have not heard about this approach before, and I only heard using self-descriptions for the sake of visually impaired people, either because there are some in the audience, or to make a meeting more inclusive not knowing if anybody in the audience has a visual impairment.

What should the description contain?

Since there are no official guidelines for inclusive meetings, we can only talk about what it includes traditionally. Generally self-descriptions are done when people introduce themselves at the beginning of a meeting or presentation, so it is most likely mixed together with the personal introduction.

This is what people often tend to describe:

• Approximate age: using decades or generations, not years. Young, middle-age, etc.
• Gender: often as a way to make the sentence more complete, (I am a female in her 50’s), but this is a place to identify gender if it is not obvious or you want people to know how you identify yourself. It is also ok here not to identify as anything and say person.
• Eye color, hair color and style, facial features: any facial features you may want to share to identify you.
• Race and ethnicity: what you identify with if you choose to share.
• Clothing: usually upper body clothing color and patterns are described.
• Anything else: anything that may not fit the above categories but you feel is unique or important about you: glasses, wheelchair, jewelry, background, etc.

Is it mandatory to describe yourself?

What is mandatory is to describe content which is otherwise not available for visually impaired people. But a person is not content or information, there is much more to it. What is it that you would like to share about yourself, what do you feel comfortable describing. Often times what it ends up being is that one person describes themselves, and the rest of the people introducing themselves follow along. Often unprepared trying to come up with something on the spot. It can even get awkward when all people describe themselves, but the last person is not comfortable doing so. At this point there are two options, either conveniently forget to describe yourself, or be very generic, such as “I am a tall person” or “I am wearing a red shirt”. Of course it is not very useful but takes away the awkwardness.

At this point, it is no longer about inclusion, rather a subjective personal identification. The description maybe more streamlined if an official audio describer does the descriptions for blind people and tries to list the same features about all participants, but here the subjectivity is the correct identification, for example incorrectly identifying gender or ethnicity.

Sometimes the event organizers may ask participants to describe themselves during the introduction, but again, this cannot be made mandatory.

Is self-description useful?

It really depends. There are several approaches among visually impaired people. Some may find it useful or interesting, while others may not care. It can be more useful for people who could see previously and can vividly imagine what a person may look like, for others colors may not mean anything.

As a person who is blind from birth, I don’t know what to do with colors, because I have no idea what they look like. When I am one of the presenters, I may not even know the color of my clothing, I may only know that I am wearing one of the shirts which are appropriate for a meeting, but there will be other blind people who exactly know what their clothing looks like.

For the sake of the conversation, it may not be meaningful if you have long or short hair. However, it is more relevant information that I can match your voice with your name so throughout the meeting I know who is talking.

However, when clothing is relevant, for example it is a Halloween party, the descriptions can be more useful.

When it comes to usefulness, also consider the amount of time it takes. I have been to meetings where 30 people described themselves, I couldn’t remember most of it, none of the descriptions were interesting, and we didn’t have time to get through the agenda.

I am not suggesting that descriptions are not useful at all, but it is worth considering if at any time it will add value to the discussion.

Identify yourself

For all practical purposes, it is much more important that you introduce yourself. Especially when there are many speakers, or some people only speak up once or twice, it is useful to know who is speaking. For example, before I say something, I would start by: “this is Tom”. But how often and for how long do you introduce yourself? Each person may have different needs in the audience, so ideally I would say all the time you start to speak, say your name. For some it may take longer to learn to identify you. However this may also not be obvious what is too much, for example if there is one male among the speakers, he will be easier to identify faster. Another example would be when there are three people in the meeting the speakers change frequently, after a few minutes it will most likely be obvious who is speaking.

My suggestion is if you are not sure, continue saying your name.

Conclusion

Just like everything else in accessibility and inclusion, make sure it makes sense and make sure that all people involved feel comfortable. I suggest that there are many pros and cons for self-descriptions, and you will find many articles on the internet arguing for one or the other, and both sides have valid reasons.

But regardless, you may sooner or later find yourself in a situation where people around you will introduce and describe themselves, and what’s important is that you are not unprepared in such a situation. I would encourage you to take a few minutes and think about your approach, what would you like to do, what would you be comfortable sharing? Then write up a description for yourself if you would ever have to describe yourself, you would know how and what you want to share. Think of this as an elevator speech for a company, you have it so you are never unprepared. Of course, I would encourage you to be ok not to describe yourself if for any reason you prefer not to, however, one way around it would be just to come up with a generic description so you don’t have to be the only one who is not following the conventions.

There are many resources on how to put some descriptions together, my favorite is from Vocal-Eyes, where you will find useful ideas.